angry tapir writes: "In keeping with Google's enthusiasm for the emerging HTML5 standard, many upcoming features of the company's Gmail Web-based e-mail service will be rendered in HTML5. One feature that the Gmail design team is now working on is the ability to drag files from the desktop into the browser. Gmail will also make use of HTML5's database standards. Currently the e-mail service uses Google Gears to store mail for offline reading, but over time that will migrate to the HTML5 standards."

One will be the ability to drag files from the browser window onto the desktop. To do this, his team is working on a new data transfer protocol, called "downloadurl."

"We tried to get this in HTML5," but were unable to do so. He jokingly said that Google will have to lobby to have some of the functionality needed to make that happen added into HTML6, which, as of today, does not exist in any form.

Instead of rendering it into a standard, the company will "encourage other browsers to use it," he said.

He noted that the company doesn't wasn't to revisit the "browser wars" of the last decade. "We tried to learn from history and be much more cooperative to the other browser makers," he said.